Volume growth, number of ends, and the topology of a complete submanifold (Q472062)

The paper under review deals with a natural problem in Riemannian geometry: study of the influence of the conduct of the curvature of a complete Riemannian manifold on its geometric and topological properties. In the first part of the article, the authors consider an isometric immersion \(f:P^m\rightarrow N^n\) of a complete non-compact Riemannian \(m\)-manifold \(P^m\) into a complete Riemannian \(n\)-manifold \(N^n\) with a pole and with radial sectional curvatures bounded from above by the corresponding radial sectional curvatures of a radially symmetric space \(M^n_w\) and determine a set of conditions on the extrinsic curvatures of \(P\) that guarantee that the submanifold is properly immersed and has finite topology. In order to obtain the finiteness of the topology, the authors show that the restricted (to the submanifold) extrinsic distance to a fixed pole in the ambient manifold has no critical points outside a compact set, and then apply classical Morse theory. Next, it is proven that a complete and proper isometric immersion \(f:P^m\rightarrow M^n_w\), \(m>2\), with controlled second fundamental form in a radially symmetric space \(M^n_w\) with sectional curvatures bounded from below by a radial function, has its volume growth bounded from above by a quantity which involves its number of ends. In the last part of the paper, the authors obtain a Bernstein-type result for minimal submanifolds in hyperbolic space.